


oxalis and roses

by lilacsilver



Category: Enola Holmes (2020)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Language of Flowers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26815888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsilver/pseuds/lilacsilver
Summary: Enola Holmes drabbles inspired by the movie. Originally posted on Tumblr.
Relationships: Enola Holmes/Viscount "Tewky" Tewksbury
Comments: 19
Kudos: 237





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You'll notice that Tewkesbury is addressed as Basilwether throughout, since that's how noble forms of address actually work.
> 
> The title of this collection means "joy and love" in the tradition of floriography. I leave it to you, readers, to decode any other floral messages used in these ficlets.

Enola’s seventeenth birthday passes almost entirely unacknowledged, so absorbed is she in concluding a particularly difficult case. A note from Mrs. Lane, trusted not to breathe a word of her location to her brothers. A code buried in the personals of every newspaper in London, waiting for its intended recipient to find it. And an envelope sealed with a noble crest, containing only a handful of carefully pressed flowers.

Iris, zinnia, nutmeg geranium.

She’s on her way out of London by the next morning.


	2. Chapter 2

Enola is twenty-three, her reputation as a tireless detective and problem-solver well established in London and beyond, when she agrees to take on a new role. Even her mother was once a wife, she thinks, and Basilwether understands her as no one else would.

High society  _ doesn’t _ understand her, and she’s quite convinced that occurring behind closed drawing room doors is any number of discussions about her new husband’s sudden madness.

It shows no signs of letting up. While he is at the estate, and she working a case out of the London house, she sends him a drawing of hellebore and yellow carnations.

He sends back a dried xeranthemum.


	3. Chapter 3

Enola Holmes does not get nervous. Nervousness wastes time that is far better spent taking action, especially given her line of work. So she must ask why – _why_ – her insides feel as though they’re on the verge of rebellion.

“I recognize that look,” Lady Basilwether says, her kind eyes bright with understanding. “I was just the same, if not worse. How long ago that was!”

 _We have never been the same,_ Enola thinks. Her mother-in-law-to-be was never so ill-suited to the title of marchioness, nor did she look at herself in her wedding gown and think how foolish it was to spend so much on something she would wear only once in her life.

Had it been up to Enola, they would have gone to the registry office and done the whole thing quietly. No extravagant silk gown, no guest list as long as her arm. Only a brief exchange of vows and rings before getting on with the rest of their lives.

But such things are simply not done when the groom is a marquess. The church will be filled with fully half the House of Lords and their wives, with whom she will doubtless be expected to socialize when all of this is over. How one finds common ground with ladies who have never so much as dreamed of throwing themselves from a moving train is one mystery she does _not_ anticipate attempting to solve.

. . .

“I do.”

It’s strange how two simple words can herald both an end and a beginning. Their guests, and their families, might be smiling, but the only smile she cares for just now is her husband’s.

She places her hand in his, and they walk back down the aisle together.


	4. Chapter 4

Enola initially blames her fatigue on the long days and nights spent tracing the likeliest path taken by a vanished gamekeeper, but it’s one of Basilwether’s own servants who quietly points out that she’s worked such demanding hours before with no such trouble. Enola has thus far resisted hiring a lady’s maid, as she can attend and dress herself quite expertly, thank you very much. The only help she accepts is from the housemaid Betsy, and only when she must put in an appearance at one social gathering or another.

“Mum died when I were young, milady, but I remember how she was before my littlest brother were born. Could hardly keep her eyes open, even in the middle of the day.”

Betsy adjusts the angle of the comb in her lady’s hair to better ensure that the delicate silver compass rose – a gift from Basilwether to the detective who always finds her way – will catch the lights in the ballroom. And to give her lady a moment to process the suggestion laid out before her.

“Oh, I’m such a fool,” Enola mutters. “I – Betsy, I can finish here. Go and tell his lordship that I require his presence.”

He’s at her door in a flash, tie hanging ‘round his neck and waistcoat only half-buttoned. On any other evening the sight would amuse her, but just now she’s preoccupied with the idea Betsy’s put in her head. She’s not been ill, a symptom that she’s vaguely aware is quite normal for mothers-to-be, but yesterday’s luncheon had left her somewhat – oh. Well.

“What is it, Enola? Betsy said it was urgent.”

“I...I rather think it is.” She pauses to gather her thoughts and her strength for the words she knows she must say, and he waits with more patience than she could muster if _he_ were the one with news to tell. Finally, finally, she whispers it into the air between them; any louder, and it would be too real.

His eyes go wide. His mouth drops open. She watches as it sinks in, as joy and terror fight a war within him. He never has learned the art of hiding his thoughts from her.

At length he presses a kiss to her hands, clasped in her lap, and another to her lips.

\--

“We will have to engage a nurse for the child,” Lady Basilwether says, some days later when the excitement has begun to settle.

“No,” Enola says immediately. She will not let her child grow up in a nursery in a distant wing of the house, all the firsts – laughter, steps, words, lost teeth – witnessed by someone else. No.

“It is the usual thing,” her mother-in-law says. “We hired an excellent nurse when I – well, when Tewky was born.”

“I don’t want -- ”

But Lady Basilwether will not be deterred. “I will handle it all myself, my dear. You won’t have to worry about anything.”

“I said -- ”

“And you’ll have to give up working, I’m afraid. You ought not to be running all over the country in your condition!”

That edict, almost but not quite more than the notion of leaving the raising of her child to some traditionalist nanny, brings Enola to the verge of tears. It’s worse than the night her brother exploded at her in the carriage, because Lady Basilwether isn’t only looking out for herself. She’s looking out for Enola, and for the baby.

But Enola’s work is one of the greatest joys of her life. It is, in fact, less a career than a calling, and she can’t bear the thought of giving it up even temporarily.

“Excuse me,” she says quietly, standing to leave the dinner table. Basilwether and Sir Whimbrel rise as she does, bound by etiquette to do so. But where his uncle retakes his seat, Basilwether follows Enola out of the dining room.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“Yes,” she tells him brusquely. “I’m going to bed.”

“Enola -- ”

She holds up a hand. “Go back to dinner. I’m fine.”

“I really don’t think you are.”

“I _will_ be, provided that you stop _pestering_ me and let me go up to bed.”

With one last worried glance back, he returns to the dining room. She ascends the stairs, keeping a tight lid on her emotions until she can shut her bedroom door behind her and quietly weep for what she fears she’s about to lose for good.

Basilwether comes to her an hour later, when she’s all but cried herself out, with a glass of water.

“I thought you might need this,” he says gently, setting it on the bedside table. His warm hand on her shoulder, drifting up to stroke her hair, sets off a fresh round of tears. She knows that her emotions are at the mercy of her condition, and she _hates_ it.

She was made to fight, as he told her once. Not to lie down and weep. But there’s nothing _to_ fight.

“Oh, Enola,” he murmurs. She lets him climb into the bed with her and take her in his arms and be the comfort to her he so clearly wishes to be.

“I don’t – I _can’t_ give up my work,” she sobs. “Don’t make me -- ”

“Never,” he says, so vehement she can’t help but believe him. “I’ll back you against Mother, and you’ll figure it out. You always do. You always have.”

“And the nurse?”

“Did you hear nothing I just said? It’s you and me, Enola. We’ll do what’s best for us and the baby, and everyone else can hang.”


	5. Chapter 5

“My uncle’s been making noise about finding a wife for me,” Basilwether says. “Since he thinks  I’m not in enough of a hurry to do it myself.”

“...Tell him you already have.”

While Enola doesn’t care a whit for what her eldest brother thinks, news of her engagement would certainly distract him from his low opinion of how her last case ended. Perhaps more importantly, she  _ is _ fond of Basilwether, and she’s starting to think it wouldn’t be so bad if they were married. They’ve been friends for a little over six years; she knows him well enough to know that he’d have no objection to her continuing to work even with a gold band on her finger.

“Do you mean it? I -- would you really -- ”

“I would.”

He kisses her right there in the middle of the estate gardens, in full view of the startled head gardener.


	6. Chapter 6

“Sophia, please come down here.”

“No!”

Enola closes her eyes and counts slowly to ten. At any other time, she’d have gladly permitted her only child to stay in the treehouse as long as she wished.

“Your uncle is coming for a visit, Sophia.”

“I don’t want to see uncle Mycroft!”

“Well, do you want to see uncle Sherlock?”

That does the trick. Sophia descends and takes off for the house, leaving Enola to follow more slowly. 

(She does most things more slowly these days, and sincerely hopes the new child is a boy so her in-laws stop worrying about the future of the title. And so she never has to go through this again.)

Lord Basilwether is waiting when she gets back to the house.

“What on earth did you say to her?’

“The truth, of course! You know she adores her uncle Sherlock.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tiny snippet of a modern AU.

“Why am I friends with you again?”

“I ask myself that very same question every day,” Enola says.

“I’m serious, Enola. It’s three in the morning and you’ve dragged me out of my very comfortable bed to spy on my neighbors.”

“Correction, I merely texted you to _tell_ you I was going to spy on your neighbors. You’re the one who decided to join me.”

“Because you’re using _my roof_ to do it! How did you even get up here, anyway? The only way is through the attic.”

“Shh! They’re getting in the car.”

“You still haven’t told me why you’re doing this.”

“I don’t trust anybody who keeps parrots as pets. They must be up to something.”

The parrots _are_ annoying, he thinks, but: “They’ve got an early flight to Paris, Enola. I think their daughter lives there. The only person who’s up to something is _you_.”


End file.
